


every terrible thing is a relief

by likewinning



Series: little beasts [94]
Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Drug Use, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-12-21 12:17:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21074774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likewinning/pseuds/likewinning
Summary: "I didn't bring you here to talk."





	every terrible thing is a relief

When Bruce gets back from Harvey's, Terry's on the couch in the living room, helping himself to Bruce's stash of pills and licking Sour Patch dust off his fingers.

"You look upset," Terry says. He yawns, stretches his long long legs. "Wanna fuck about it?" he asks, and Bruce doesn't answer, just shoves him off the couch and gets his hand in his hair, opens his jeans and shoves Terry's face on his cock.

Terry obliges happily, slurping and sucking and not putting up any kind of fight, and for a moment Bruce hates him for it. He knocks Terry down to the floor and Terry stares up and him, licks his lips. He thinks about putting his hands around Terry's throat, the way -

He flips Terry over, pulls his jeans off just enough to expose his ass, and shoves two spit-wet fingers inside of him. Terry moans like the fucking whore he is and Bruce mutters, "You like that, don't you?"

"Yeah," Terry moans. He tries to move back against Bruce but Bruce holds him down, smacks his ass any time Terry tries to move.

"Fucking slut," Bruce said. "All you want is my drugs."

"And your cock," Terry breathes out, and Bruce wraps his hand around his neck, doesn't want to fucking _hear_ someone that's not -

He fucks Terry into the carpet, doesn't spare a moment for the rugburn on Terry's face or hands, or whether Terry even comes. He pulls out and finishes on him, stands up and says, "Get the fuck out."

Terry rolls over and stares at him, and for the first time Bruce almost sees a person behind his eyes instead of a maniacal, drug-addled thief, but -

He doesn't care. He locks the door behind Terry, for all the good it'll do, and takes enough downers to knock him out for the rest of the night.

*

Dick answers on the first ring, because he always does. "Hey Bruce," Dick says. "What's -"

"Get over here," Bruce says, and he doesn't know where Dick is right now, doesn't particularly care, but in less than twenty minutes he's whistling up the walkway to the Manor.

"You look like you need a nap, boss," Dick says when he sees him. He reaches up to touch the circles around Bruce's eyes, and Bruce grabs him by the wrist, hard.

"I didn't bring you here to talk," Bruce says, and Dick blinks at him, coked-out eyes going wide. Bruce remembers when Dick was just a fucking _teenager_, a kid who'd never even _seen_ real drugs before. Bruce meant to protect him from these things, at first.

He meant -

"Then what," Dick starts, and Bruce grabs him by the arm, twists his hand behind his back and then the other before pressing him against the foyer wall.

"I think you know," Bruce murmurs, and he feels Dick shiver, and the thing inside him that's been twisting around since the last time he saw Jason gets uglier.

"You've been neglecting your family," Bruce says. He squeezes Dick's ass, possessive and mean, and Dick murmurs something unintelligible with his cheek pressed to the wall.

"Little whore," Bruce says. "Running off with Harper all the time, abandoning this place. None of you ever appreciate what I did for you."

"No," Dick whines. He squirms against nothing, back and then forward to try to get any other kind of physical contact. He strains his head back to look at Bruce, eyes wide and needy like those first nights after Bruce brought him home, when Dick would show up in his room practically _begging_ and Bruce would tell him no.

Always no.

The kid was vulnerable, had just lost his parents. He's not a _monster._

"Didn't I give you everything?" Bruce asks, and Dick nods, whimpers as Bruce unbuttons Dick's jeans and pulls them off, slides down to the floor and bites a heavy, sucking bruise onto Dick's ass cheek. It's not even a blank canvas, and he doesn't care. Unbound, Dick's hands hang loose at his sides, until Bruce drags his tongue along his hole. Dick cries out, grabs his cock in and says, "_Bruce_."

"Fucking needy thing," Bruce taunts. "Should've let you into my bed sooner, shouldn't I?"

"Y-yes," Dick says, and there's something spitting and angry about the way he says it that Bruce chooses to ignore. Dick _worships_ him. "I wanted, I -"

"You needed me," Bruce says. He pushes Dick's legs as far apart as they'll go with his jeans still at his ankles. "And I let you turn into _this_."

"I'm," Dick stammers out. Bruce lets go of his cock and Dick grabs on, head falling back as Bruce stands up and thrusts inside of him.

"That was too easy," Bruce says, biting the back of his neck.

The circus taught Dick how to throw knives, how to deceive strangers, how to blow things up. He taught Dick how to shoot a gun, how to fight to the death if necessary. But Bruce still has no _idea_ who taught Dick how to swivel his hips like this, how to moan like a twenty dollar whore, the way Jason would never -

He fucks Dick without mercy, without kindness, without anything like how it used to be when Jason lived here, the three of them in some kind of delusional drugged-out paradise. He wants to tell Dick how good he feels, but the deadness inside of him persists even as he turns Dick back around, gets Dick's legs wrapped around him and Dick's eyes staring up at him with -

It's not the adoration he remembers. It's not -

It doesn't matter. He jerks Dick off with one hand, holds him up with the other, and when they're filthy and it's over he looks at Dick, who's breathless and splayed against the wall, and says, "You can go now."

*

"You know," Dinah says, "you look like shit."

They're sitting in a cafe on the East End, ostensibly having their monthly meeting, but Bruce drowned his coffee in whiskey and he barely knows where he is.

"Like a ninety year old man," Steph pipes up from where she's sitting on Dinah's lap. 

"Thanks," Bruce says. "I appreciate the honesty."

He used to bring Jason to these things, as backup. He's known Dinah over a decade, but in Gotham you can't fully trust anyone.

He doesn't even trust himself.

"I'm worried about you," Dinah says. She taps her espresso cup with her long blue nails and says, "Your family is falling apart."

"It's fine," Bruce grits out.

"Mm," Dinah says. "So what have you been doing in that giant mansion all alone? Playing Scooby Doo?"

Steph giggles, and Bruce looks at her. She was smart enough to leave Bruce before she was ever really on his team, with a blunt, "See you around, jackoff," before she walked out the door. Maybe the others just didn't know better. Maybe -

"Look," Dinah says, waving her hand. "This really isn't about your complicated relationships with people half your age." Bruce raises his eyebrows in Steph's direction, and Steph helpfully flips him off. "What I'm trying to figure out," Dinah continues, "is if you're even fit to do your job anymore."

"Excuse me?" Bruce asks. He's alert, suddenly, eyes darting around the coffee shop like any one of these fuckers is about to pull out a knife or a gun or a sharpened stir stick.

"Bruce, baby," Dinah rolls her eyes, but she reaches for his hand. "That wasn't a threat. At least - not _yet_."

"What -" Bruce starts, and Dinah kisses Steph's cheek, moves her off her lap so they can both stand up.

"What I mean is," Dinah says. "Get your business in order, before I have to."

She leaves the cafe with Steph's arm slipped between hers, and Bruce trades his coffee for what's left in his flask. He stumbles into an East End bar, slits the throats of a couple of low-priority drug dealers he would've gotten to eventually anyway, and wipes their blood on his jeans.

No one he walks past says a word.

He calls Jason from the car, and Jason picks up on the second ring like the good soldier he is.

Bruce doesn't say anything, and after a while Jason sighs and says, "I told you I'll still do whatever you need, B."

Bruce hangs up. He knows Jason doesn't mean - 

He doesn't mean _that_. He goes home to a house full of things he doesn't want.


End file.
